A couple of weeks after Apple shipped its second-generation AirPods, the company’s Beats division is finally making its own entrance into the true wireless earbuds market. The new $249.95 Powerbeats Pro ship in May and are Beats’ most significant product in years. I get the feeling that, for many people, these are going to prove even more compelling than AirPods. They offer longer battery life, they seal fully in your ears without letting in outside noise, they include the same Apple H1 chip as the latest AirPods for hands-free “Hey Siri” voice commands, and yes, to my ears, the Powerbeats Pro sounded better during my brief introduction to them.

This sounds great. They’re also water-resistant and have physical volume controls. Downsides: the case is too large for a pocket, no Qi charging. I wonder whether the isolation is good enough for airplane use.

Play pause can happen when you put Powerbeats Pro in or take them out, just like AirPods, but where AirPods are all stealth and you can tap invisible quote-unquote buttons to do one thing of your choosing, Powerbeats Pro have legit physical hardware controls. There's volume up and down, right on the top, and the big B button on the outside, which you can even long-press to pass on a call.

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I used to have the Beatsx wireless earbuds and liked them a lot for plane travel. The rubber tips provided a good amount of isolation, so the experience of listening to music & movies on a plane was night and day compared with standard earbuds. (For reference, when it comes to sound quality, the Beatsx are similar to the previous gen Powerbeats. Even though these Powerbeats Pro are new, I would expect them to fit and sound similar.)

When it comes to plane travel I prefer earbuds like this to over-ear headphones because they're so much smaller. I used to take over-ear headphones in my carry-on, but their bulk is cumbersome.

Caveat: I've never had noise-canceling headphones like the Bose that many people love, so don't know how the isolation compares to that.